South Korea will press North Korea to agree to regularly hold reunions of families separated by the Korean War when the sides hold Red Cross talks in the North next week, a senior official said Friday.
The Tuesday-Wednesday talks in the border town of Kaesong will come days before the divided states hold the first such reunions in a year at a joint mountain resort on the east coast in the North.
South Korea has persistently demanded that North Korea allow the reunions to be held regularly regardless of the state of their political relations, which eroded to the worst level in years after the sinking in March of a South Korean warship blamed on Pyongyang.
South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said during a parliamentary audit that his side will renew the demand when the Red Cross officials of the countries meet next week in Kaesong for final preparations for the Oct. 30-Nov. 5 reunion event.
"We will make efforts to fundamentally resolve the issue of making reunions regularized" during the upcoming talks, he said.
During the three rounds of Red Cross talks that led to the agreement to hold the upcoming reunions, North Korea demanded that South Korea resume its cross-border tours to Mount Kumgang.
The tours won the North millions of U.S. dollars before they were suspended in 2008 over the shooting death of a South Korean tourist who had apparently strayed into a restricted zone.
North Korea dropped its demand at the last minute, agreeing on the final arrangements for the reunions. It later made a request to hold working dialogue with South Korea over ways to resume the tours. Seoul has yet to give an answer.
More than 80,000 South Koreans are waiting for a chance to be reunited with their loved ones left in the North after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce.
Only 20,800 family members have been reunited since 2000 when the Koreas held their first summit. About one-fifth of them have been reunited via video. Virtually no means of contact are available between the citizens of the countries.